1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of softball and baseball bats and more particularly relates to design changes made to said bats to increase their useful life.
2. Description of Related Art
Tubular metallic and wooden softball and baseball bats are well known to the art. A common example is the tubular aluminum bat. Such bats have the advantage of a generally good impact response, meaning that the bat effectively transfers power to a batted ball. This effective power transfer results in ball players achieving good "slugging" distances with batted balls.
Even though today's aluminum bats perform well, there is an ever--continuing quest for bats with better overall slugging capacity. Many of the design efforts to date have focused upon the materials, components and geometric shape (exterior and interior) of the bat. A fine example of such an effort is U.S. Pat. No. 5,415,398 (May 16, 1995), entitled "Softball Bat," to Michael D. Eggiman. This patent discloses an extremely high-performance tubular aluminum bat featuring a specially designed tubular aluminum insert.
Even though these efforts have conferred a terrific benefit upon the bat--making art (and the public), it is believed that relatively little effort has been devoted to a related problem which also undermines the bat's (and, therefore, the ball player's) overall performance. That problem is the problem of soft spots, or localized areas of weak or eroded material strength, developing in particular portions of the hitting portion of the bat.
The reason soft spots occur is easy enough to understand. Many, if not all, bats feature a manufacturer's logo or trademark on some portion of the surface of the bat. These logos invariably are not symmetrically placed around the circumference of the bat; rather, they present their appearance predominantly on one side (at one location) of the bat. Human nature being what it is, the ball player will frequently, out of simple habit, grasp the bat, adopt his hitting stance, and prepare to swing, with the bat in hand in the same position each time. The result is obvious enough: each time he hits the ball (whether fair or foul), the ball strikes the same portion of the bat.
When the ball strikes the same relatively small portion of the bat's hitting surface time and time again, it is believed that the material in that area of the bat slowly weakens. Eventually, over time, the aluminum bat will dent; the wooden bat will crack. Both occurrences are likely premature.
The cost to the ball player (and his team) of this phenomenon is clear. The "spring", or rebound (or, more technically speaking, the impact response), of the bat erodes more and more over the useful life of the bat. Furthermore, the bat wears out (e.g., dents or cracks) prematurely, forcing the player to incur the cost of a new bat sooner than would otherwise be the case.
What is needed is a design for a bat which will maximize the lifetime performance of the bat, regardless of its material of construction, its components, or its geometric shape (exterior or interior). Specifically, what is needed is a bat design which ensures that (or at least increases the probability that) the force of the ball impact will be distributed evenly about the bat throughout its useful life.